The Lunate Interview - Ben Pester
Interview by Jess Moody
Ben Pester’s debut short story collection Am I in the Right Place? was published in 2021 to critical acclaim for its surreal and witty depiction of contemporary unease. Ben’s work has appeared in The London Magazine, Granta, Hotel, Five Dials and elsewhere. When not writing fiction, he is a technical writer. He lives with his family in North London.
Congratulations on Am I in the Right Place? which is weird and wonderful. Tell us a bit about your writing background and how you pulled together the collection.
Some of the stories in here are the earliest short stories that I've written – I just hadn’t done anything in the short form before. I had this failing novel (failing not because of the book, but just because my time and attention wasn't there for it), and then I didn't write anything for ages. I was unhappy, and kind of convinced that I was finished with writing altogether. Then a writer friend of mine wanted to run a workshop, exploring different forms, and I started to write short stories for that. People in the workshop were complementary about the work, and so supportive. The first story I wrote for the workshop, ‘Sheba’, is in the collection, and also ‘Rachel reaches out’.
In terms of organising the collection, I wrote ‘Orientation’, the first story in the collection, quite late. I decided I wanted it to contain some of the themes that recur across stories, like of childhood and memory – and generational memory – and reality, and those linked things. The story is an orientation into the book: this is not going to change; it’s not going to get any more normal.
Maybe because I don't actually have a background in English literature or anything (I studied drama at university, and screenwriting as my MA), everything that I've learned about writing has come from theatre. I’d happily write short stories that are more or less monologues. In the world of a short story, the audience – the reader – is, in a way, made into a character by the person speaking.
That can do something compelling with how the story moves along: while this person has been speaking and you've been paying attention to one thing, they're going to step aside and...something horrendous! It relates to stagecraft, how you’d be drawn away from the thing that you thought you were understanding.
You tend to play around with form: your own textual unsettling of reality. How far do you go with a more experimental style? What’s the balance?
I value the craft of writing, and making things engaging. somebody doesn't have to go all the way with you in terms of subtext: they could just read what's in front of them, and enjoy it. Even if it's a bit strange. Actually, the stranger something is, I think you kinda want the writing itself to be accessible. Like it's already weird enough, I'm not going to make the language impossible as well.
As for finding the balance, I have two tests. The first test is: it enjoyable to write? If it’s exciting to me, let me go ahead and write it and find out what happens and who these people are. In short stories, an idea comes along, you go with it, and then you realise that there are certain rules within it: but once they’re established, you get the chance to break them a little bit.
Then there's the second unavoidable question of: is it good to read? As long as it passes both of those tests then it gets done. I find that within those two questions, there's a whole world of experiment you can do.
I also don’t really think there's a ‘normal’ book. Even what you might describe as ‘commercial’ fiction often does things that are interesting experiments, which you might notice more if it was slightly less plot oriented, like the Antony Horowitz ‘book within a book’ in Magpie Murders.
I know that I write very weird stories and so fair enough, quite a lot of the time people might feel confused and maybe not enjoy them for that reason. But I hope that they don't feel as if they've been somehow shut out from anything. I’m much more interested in bringing everyone along.
That's what's unnerving about your writing. The reader feels at ease, it’s familiar, it’s accessible, I’m going along. And then that slow shifting of the backdrop, those holes appearing, and we’re suddenly already in the labyrinth, down the rabbit-hole. Speaking of holes… what’s with all the holes, Ben?
There were a couple of stories which had them in. A lot of writers are interested in this. You know the short story ‘He-y Come on Ou-t!’ by Shinichi Hoshi, about the hole that appears on the edge of town? Everyone's a bit wary of it, then somebody throws in a pebble to listen to how far down it goes, and there’s no sound. It inevitably becomes the town dump. Then one day a pebble falls from the sky…
Things vanishing is a preoccupation of mine. Vanishing into something unpredictable like a void is, well, my interpretation of ‘our situation’. I think everybody feels fairly convinced that there's some sort of massive transformation coming, but not quite sure which frightening source it will come from. I like the idea that in fiction something unexpected can appear and just sit there in a kind of malevolent way. The holes are maybe an abstracted form, like the bloody hands: a sense of guilt or responsibility or a thing you haven't dealt with, a kind of passiveness. There's lots of analogies. But I also tried hard to commit to the reality of the stories, and let people worry about the holes in their own way.
Across the collection there’s also the sense of this vague, apocalyptic event that's already happened or happening, but not quite named…
I want to stay in the moment that the characters find themselves in, so I don’t want to necessarily create a whole apocalypse everywhere. Relentless misery turns me off. The sort of relentless, detailed forensic explanation of what happened turns me off as well, I don't like to write that way. But I'm really interested in the way you can fit a huge gap of time into a short story.
Which is fascinating, because that’s one of those classic things the purist guides tell you not to do in the short story. But it’s fun, isn’t it?
When you're teaching or learning creative writing, those kind of rules are useful at the time that you're learning. There's a starting point where you say ‘in this space it’s a good idea to stick to this guidance, and if you’re stuck you can always come back to these guides’. But I don't think anyone who's trying to help other people with their writing actually thinks their job is to give you a lot of rules to follow.
While you don’t spell out some of the more surreal elements, there’s a real physicality and specificity in how you describe daily life. So, you might not explain the holes, the egg, the apocalypse, but we see details of, say, eating Maltesers, working in the open-plan office, and sending emails, bleaching stairwells. How much was that a conscious balance?
Detail itself, is texture, that's what I would say. You need to feel you're in the space, and it needs to be not clichéd, even if it is identical to every other space (the modern open-plan office as ‘look at the drones’ etc). If you're going to make that a setting for something absurd and dark, then you choose your details carefully.
In ‘How they loved him’ for example, the presence of something physically disturbing is meant to be a counterpoint to something morally disgusting, it’s bit of a balancing act, because I don't want them to become analogies. I still want that main character to consider the hole in the wall to be a real world problem, a continuing issue; that they still have potentially, like, supernatural construction issues – and how much will that cost? How cheaply can I get it fixed?
The world becomes more identifiable to the reader when you have that texture; without anyone having to do any shorthand work. You can call it avoiding cliché, but really its more about thinking hard about what will bring the reader into the world you’re creating. I don’t want people to dismiss these spaces – offices, homes, etc as bits of stock footage. They should be unique, and also feel real.
It’s important that the place is satisfying to read, it's a good place to spend time. Even if it's kind of odd.
What do you wish you’d known when you started writing short-stories in particular? Any wise words for ‘emerging’ writers?
I wish I'd started working in the short form earlier. If you think that you can do it and you enjoy doing it, then you should do it. I found writing something short, and maybe funny, and a bit odd came quite naturally, which somehow felt like cheating. Like it’s not meant to be easy. But I also discovered that there's loads and loads of hard work in between the two things
Don’t make the mistake of sending work out all the time, feverishly trying to be published and looking at other people getting published and feeling left behind. You should have your work out there, but you shouldn't do it based on some sort of numbers game.
Read other people's work, read magazines, decide if you think they're any good. Then decide if you're prepared to get your work published for very little money. Then you should send it in.
The real pleasure in writing is writing something and knowing that it's good. The publication of work is brilliant: people say nice things, and it’s an amazing feeling, getting reviews and stuff. But nothing compares to when you when you had a good idea, and you see it through to the end. There's no point in rushing that. If you send something out half-arsed, you're denying yourself the whole purpose of the work
What’s next?
I'm just writing. I have almost enough for another collection. I don’t like to publish everything before the collection is ready to publish; I want to keep at least half the stories unseen and unavailable except in the collection itself. The recent story in The London Magazine, and a version of the tweet story which went out from Tar Press, along with an earlier one with Hotel Magazine will be in the collection. Exacting Clam have a story of mine out in December, and also Mercurius magazine, because they asked nicely, but then that's it. I'll finish the other stories. I'm really excited about it: some of it's quite heart-breaking, I think. I'm hoping to do more reading (at live events) when things are a bit more relaxed. Alongside this collection is a novel, almost ready to show my agent and then the world I hope.
Ben Pester’s debut short story collection Am I in the Right Place? is published by Boiler House Press and available now.